Georgy Grebenshchikov on the pages of pre-revolutionary periodicals: Problems of text corpus formation

This article examines the pre-revolutionary work of the writer and journalist Georgy Dmitrievich Grebenshchikov, a significant figure in early 20th-century Siberian regional literature and journalism. Although his name, largely forgotten after his emigration in 1920, is re-entering cultural discourse, the prerevolutionary stage of his career remains understudied. This gap is attributed to a predominant scholarly focus on his emigre period and regional activities. The research is founded on the hypothesis that pre-revolutionary texts by Grebenshchikov, unknown to both the scholarly community and contemporary readership, exist in periodical archives. The study aims to identify his literary and artistic-journalistic works that are presumed to have survived exclusively in periodicals and have not yet entered scholarly discourse. The methodology employs search, analytical, and comparative methods. The analysis encompassed 4,693 issues of two Siberian newspapers: Sibirskaya Zhizn’ (1908-1917) and Zhizn’ Altaya (1911-1916). This work led to the identification of 290 publications attributed to Grebenshchikov. Among these, 111 texts are classified as literary and artistic-journalistic works; 57 of them exist solely within these newspapers and have thus remained unknown to a wider readership and researchers. The study also revealed instances where the author renamed works and altered texts for subsequent publication in other editions and collections - a practice not previously addressed in scholarship. This finding highlights significant gaps in the study of Grebenshchikov’s pre-revolutionary period and underscores the need for deeper exploration of his artistic publications from various literary perspectives. Further search efforts in other periodicals (e.g., Sibirskaya Nov ’, Obskaya Zhizn ’, Russkie Vedomosti, Sovremennik) are necessary to identify additional early texts by the writer that have not been introduced into scholarly dscourse. The discovery and scholarly interpretation of these texts could significantly contribute to reconstructing a comprehensive picture of the literary and journalistic process at the beginning of the 20th century, expanding our understanding of the development of literature and journalism both in the Siberian region and on a national scale. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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